Valentino, the last titan of couture’s golden age

PARIS (AP):

Valentino Garavani’s death cast a shadow over the opening day of Paris Fashion Week menswear Tuesday, as front-row guests and industry figures mourned one of the last towering names of 20th-century couture. The Italian designer, 93, died at his Rome residence, the Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti Foundation said. Though he built his house in Rome, his career was closely tied to the Paris runways, where he spent decades presenting his collections.

He “was one of the last big couturiers who really embodied what was fashion in the 20th century,” said Pierre Groppo, fashion editor-in-chief at Vanity Fair France.

On a day meant to sell the future, many guests said they were thinking about what fashion has lost: the couturier as a living institution.

Groppo highlighted the codes that made Valentino instantly recognizable – “the dots, the ruffles, the knots” – and credited a generation of designers who, he said, “in a way, invented what is celebrity culture.” Valentino’s vision was simple: make women look luminous, then make the moment unforgettable.

He dressed Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Elizabeth Taylor, cemented his signature “Valentino red” in the public imagination, and, through his decades-long partnership with Giancarlo Giammetti, became as iconic a figure as the clients in his front row.

THE END OF A FASHION ERA

Prominent fashion writer Luke Leitch framed the loss in similarly outsized terms, calling Valentino “the last of the fashion ‘leviathans of that generation’,” and saying it was “absolutely” the end of a certain class of designer: figures whose names could carry a global house, and whose authority came not from viral speed, but from permanence.

Trained in Paris before founding his maison in Rome, Valentino became a rare bridge figure: Italian by origin, but fluent in the rituals that made Paris couture an institution. His career moved between those two capitals of elegance, bringing Roman grandeur into a system that still treats fashion not only as commerce, but as ceremony.

Even as he aged, the house’s founder kept turning up at its couture and ready-to-wear shows, as observed by one Associated Press journalist, until he eventually retreated from public life, all the while radiating quiet grandeur from his front-row seat.

For some in Paris on Tuesday, the loss felt personal because Valentino’s world was never only Italian.

Groppo recalled the designer as “very much more than a fashion brand,” adding, “It was a lifestyle.”

That lifestyle – couture polish, social glamour, and the conviction that elegance could be a form of power – remains a reference point even as fashion accelerates toward louder branding and faster cycles.

“It’s quite sad as he’s so important to the fashion industry, and he contributed a lot and I cannot forget the stunning red he created,” said Lolo Zhang, a Chinese fashion influencer attending Louis Vuitton ‘s show in Paris.

“He always celebrated pure beauty, and architecture for the silhouette, and how he used colour. The old era just passed by.”

Other guests described a delayed realisation, the kind that arrives only when a figure who seemed permanent is suddenly gone.

YSL, CHANEL AND VALENTINO

“There are some people who want to be Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel ... There are also people who are spontaneously Valentino,” said Guy-Claude Agboton, deputy editor of Ideat magazine. “It’s a question of identity.”

For Paris fashion observer Benedict Epinay, the grief was bound up with memory. And with the emotional charge of Valentino’s final bow.

“It was such a great moment. I was lucky enough to attend the last show he gave,” Epinay said. “It was so moving because we knew at that time it was the last show.”